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“Tea Time” by Canadian artist Lily Seika Jones. Watercolor.
(via crawlin-through-daisies)
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magic-gps asked:
before computers, did public libraries have typewriters folks could come in and use?
Yes they did.
…to new.
What’s interesting to me is the suggestion that being able to type was a common enough skill - or capability, anyway, speaking as someone who’s hunt-and-pecked through a bunch of novels, short stories and screenplays - that these machines were worth installing.
(Ray Bradbury wrote the first draft of “Fahrenheit 451” on a coin-operated typewriter.)
When I started my first full-time public librarian job in 2008, the library had two typewriters out for public use and they kept decently busy. I think they may both be gone now, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
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making a compilation of text posts that knocked sense straight into me
(via riotsquirrrl)
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for a long time i lived alone, but then i got a service dog. after a lot of training, the service dog came to live with me—except, the same day the trainers brought quincy, an orange tabby tomcat also showed up.
“you didn’t tell us you had a cat!” said the trainers, both very upset (because they hadn’t trained quincy to live with a cat).
“i don’t have a cat,” i said. “I don’t know who this is.”
the cat never went away. i named him poe dameron and he lived with me and quincy. they got along fine, in their own way.
we had our quiet adventures. poe was very cuddly but sometimes he just took off for a day or two. once he got into some paint.
after a while, i found out that poe dameron really lived across the alleyway, and belonged to my neighbor elizabeth’s teenaged son, and his real name was PUMPKIN. but poe apparently didn’t like the teenaged son (probably not least because he named him PUMPKIN), so he had come to live with us instead. elizabeth was fine with it.
the years went by and one day poe dameron crossed the rainbow bridge too soon. i took his ashes to elizabeth. we were very sad.
a few weeks later, she asked me to come over to see something.
it turned out that poe dameron had also lived with a THIRD lady, a few streets over. this lady, whom neither of us knew, was a painter, and she had made this painting of poe dameron. i don’t know what she called him, but she painted him like one of your french girls.
“i think you should have it,” elizabeth said, tactfully. “after all, he spent the most time with you.” i was quite sure she just didn’t want this hideous painting in her gabillion-dollar house, but i agreed.
the painting now hangs in the kitchen over my stove—not least because its brick-red frame matches my curtains. and because it delights me to see poe dameron every day, looking so fluffy and sultry, like an orientalist renaissance odalisque.
Everyone reblog consummate cabana boy moocher and orange cat extraordinaire Poe Dameron and his odalisque.
(via knitmeapony)
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shoutout to C418 (one of minecraft’s composers) for just fucking snapping recently on twitter
and just to add on
(via crawlin-through-daisies)
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i taught a baking class for 12 year olds today and we made your garden variety chocolate chip cookies, but i’m a big believer in Questioning Everything and the who/what/where/why/when/how behind things, so the first part of the class was purposely letting the kids do things the wrong way, to show and explain why we do things the way we do.
“why do we bake cookies at 180 for 9 minutes when we could do 400 for 2 minutes?”
-enter the godawful lump of coal with a still gross wet and uncooked inside
“why do we have to scoop out little cookies instead of doing the whole tray?”
-ok well that one you can technically do if the spread is even. you just end up with one giant, structurally unsound cookie.
“PLEASE CAN WE MAKE GIANT COOKIES”
(we did make 1 giant tray cookie)
we talked a lot about why consistency is important, but i don’t think it really hammered home until i said “okay everyone gets ONE cookie, that’s fair, right?” and then handed out cookies of hugely varying sizes. + baked one fat lump of a cookie that still wasn’t done at the 9 minutes, vs the regular one i put in that came out charred by the time the first was actually done.
we also made a row of cookies where each one had one single differing ingredient omitted, like a cookie with no flour, or a cookie with no butter, and laid them all out on a single tray to bake together to see how each ingredient affects the outcome.
two of the little girls added cocoa to their cookie doughs until it matched the colour of each others skin to make best friend cookies, and that almost made me tear up a bit 🥺
got briefly distracted (…for over half an hour…) talking about how eggs form when someone cracked an egg and it had 2 yolks
expertly tolerated being asked how old i am (just turned 31 the other day) which was immediately followed by asking if i watched the moon landing live on tv
was so focused on keeping track of all the kids that in the end i forgot to make a cookie for myself, but it’s ok because one of the girls gave me this
tiny……….
the class went well and they asked if i wanted to do another one in a couple weeks and i said yeah, and they’re taking uh… fuck, what’s the word for inventory when it’s people?? attendance?? whatever, they’re trying to see who’s interested to get a feel of if it’d be 1 three hour class again or if there’s too many kids so we’d do a couple classes. anyways, i love the emails from Concerned Parents.
“will there be knives involved?”
we are baking cookies.“what temperatures does the oven get to/will it be hot enough to burn?”
we are baking cookies.“will there be [insert ingredient used in cookies]?”
we are baking cookies.“are you using fahrenheit or celsius?”
??????? d-does it matter?? it’s going to get Hot. (also celsius; this is ontario)“are the ovens childproof?”
no?? i’m assuming you’re asking if i’m going to let your kids reach into the ovens while i’m staring out a window in another room. i will not be allowing your children to use the ovens. they will not be left unattended.“why is the library baking class taking place at the high school?”
the library does not have 10 ovens. the library does not even have 1 oven. the high school has many ovens.“what if i don’t want my child to have cookies? can you let her make muffins instead?”
this is a baking class for cookies. we are baking cookies.“cookies aren’t healthy. why don’t you make [insert whatever]”
do you know how many cookies i can make with a $40 budget and a trip to the bulk store? we are making cookies.“who needs a class to bake a cookie, why not teach something more valuable?”
IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE COOKIES, KAREN, IT’S ABOUT FAMILIARIZING CHILDREN WITH THE ART AND SCIENCE OF BAKING/COOKING/FOOD, ABOUT TRYING NEW THINGS, MAKING MISTAKES AND REALIZING THAT THE MISTAKES ARE NOT ONLY OKAY TO MAKE BUT VALUABLE IN AND OF THEMSELVES, FAMILIARIZING THEM WITH INDEPENDENCE, THE UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THINGS CAN COME TOGETHER TO FORM A NEW AND BETTER WHOLE, ALL WHILE HAVING TRYING TO INJECT A MODICUM OF JOY INTO THEIR LITTLE LIVES. SORRY THAT THERE ARE CONCEPTS AT PLAY YOU CAN’T SEEN TO UNDERSTAND HERE. MAYBE YOU SHOULD COME JOIN AND I’LL LET YOU MAKE A FUCKING COOKIE.(via maybeasunflower)
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ALT@bluehairedemon you can’t hide this in the tags
(via crawlin-through-daisies)
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Tim Curry with his GameBoy on the set of The Three Musketeers (1993)
cunt levels off the charts
(via dduane)